“Leadership Is Not About You—It’s About Those You Serve” Conversation with Former Minister Sandiaga Uno

In this powerful episode of A Legacy of Purpose: Conversations with Dina H. Sherif, we sit down with Sandiaga Salahuddin Uno—Indonesia’s former Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy, a seasoned entrepreneur, and global thought leader in inclusive development.

From scaling businesses after the Asian Financial Crisis to creating millions of good-quality jobs during COVID-19, Minister Uno’s story is one of resilience, vision, and deep commitment to public service. Together, we explore how his entrepreneurial background shaped his approach to governance, why he believes entrepreneurship is a form of resistance to the status quo, and how countries like Indonesia are rewriting their global narrative through innovation, digital storytelling, and youth empowerment.

We also dive into his reflections on faith, family, AI, and the creative economy’s power to shape culture and commerce.

Available now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Host: Dina Sherif
Produced by Donovan Beck

For Media Inquiries:
Donovan Beck

Communications and Storytelling Coordinator

Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship

Sloan School of Management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
292 Main St, E38, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02142
don_beck@mit.edu

Transcript

Dina Sherif: 0:09

So welcome back to legacy of purpose, and today, we're super, super honored to welcome former Minister of Tourism and creative economy San Diego salah. Din uno, very happy, very proud of the Salah. Din Aub, part So Sandy, or pas Sandy, as we would call you in Indonesia, is a visionary entrepreneur, a global advocate for economic transformation. And when he was minister, he played a critical role in repositioning Indonesia's tourism industry, and fostering a new era of digital entrepreneurship and championing AI driven economic growth, which I'm super excited to hear about. I was first introduced to the former minister by a very close friend who was also on this podcast, RIT, who was the dear friend of mine I know, former CEO of grab Indonesia, and also a member of our business circle Advisory Board, very close friend to our sender center. And it's incredibly exciting to have the chance to have you with us on this podcast. Thank you for coming. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me. Dina, no pleasure is all all ours, and we're very excited to delve deep into who you are and and your career, but I feel you know, when I first met you over zoom with ritzy, one of the first things you said to me was, oh Dina, I love coming to Boston because of my daughter. And it, it was interesting to me to pause and think when I thought back to that moment, because, you know, this was a zoom call, and it was meant to be a business, kind of transactional meeting of, you know, Sandy, I want to introduce you to the center. And ritzy wanted me to know more about your work, and you started this conversation about your family, and that is, I think, wonderful. So I want to ask you, who is San Diego uno, beyond the massive titles and achievements that you've had across your career, because in that conversation, you didn't lead with any of that you led with your daughter. Yeah,

Minister Uno: 2:27

I'm a father and a husband first and foremost. And I come from a very small family,

Dina Sherif: 2:41

and not from Jakarta. Originally,

Minister Uno: 2:42

not from Jakarta. I'm kind of well, Indonesia. We'd like to invite you to come to Indonesia eventually. But is a country of 17,000 islands. My dad comes from the east part of the country. My mom is from Java, the most populated island, and I was born in Sumatra, which is one of the largest island in the West. So I'm kind of mix of different parts of country, part of the country, and this is a country that went through, I guess, series of, I would say, Dutch rule for about 300 plus year, and then Japanese occupations three and a half to four years, and we gain our independence in 1945 so the strength of the nation is culture of unity and diversity. So we're family, very family driven very What do you call close knit? It's a very small community, although it has 280 million

Dina Sherif: 4:06

I was going to say Indonesia's anything but small, but it's you, but it's communal. It's

Minister Uno: 4:13

very communal. People knows, families from different generations, more than 450 languages, 700 ethnic groups. I think local dialects could range up to 1000 so, and it's the largest archipelago, so it's unique. So when we, and in particular, my experience relate to somebody. It's always we come from, from people point of view, very personal point of view. And I think it has some advantage in business, but also have some i. Challenges when you approach things like this, on a technical matter with in particular politics. But I'm so glad we got to meet and I'm here. My daughter lives in Boston for the last six, seven years, and she was married a couple of years ago, and she worked together with a husband here in Boston. So any chance, any chance you can come visit, visit, especially in this warm weather, with some snow, snow in the background, it would be it would not only make me happy, but my wife is very happy.

Dina Sherif: 5:43

So let me just ask you. You know you've honestly reading reading through your career and the highs and the lows, but you've achieved quite a bit, both as a business leader and as a policy maker. But that must have been a very, very busy life, but yet you said, I'm a father, I'm a husband, before you mentioned any of your titles. So in the midst of all of the madness of your life, how did you keep family at the center?

Minister Uno: 6:17

Very difficult. Because when, throughout my career, I've been focusing, I take my jobs very seriously. I don't take myself that as serious as I'm taking my job because I think you know, my past career has been a professional and I serve my company, the bosses, the shareholders, and, you know, put not only nine to five, but even crazy hours. And I tried to always find time for family and for, I guess, religiously taking time to reflect on the journey. And that got changed when I step into politics and and public service, because you once Well, everything is fair, in love war and politics,

Dina Sherif: 7:34

I don't know about fair. Fair

Minister Uno: 7:36

means that it's, it's, it's game on. Basically, yeah, you, you no longer have a private life. You everything is open to the public. Everything is open and with social media, and I step into politics at the age of social media. So at that time, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter is now called X is the means of people knowing a person, especially aspiring politicians and and that took a lot of convincing to my family, because they have really been very private. My wife and my kids are very, very valuing our privacy so much, and when I made that commitment, general Prabhu, who's now the president, was the one convincing me to say, Okay, you it's a great story. You were laid off. You lost your job during the Asian financial crisis. You built your business from scratch, from three people, and now you have 30,000 employees, but your impact is only to get 30,000 employees, maybe plus their families, 120,000 if you go into public service, you're going to serve millions, and you're going to make impact to millions of Indonesians that really needed some interventions to provide wealth and prosperity. So that got me thinking, and so I negotiated with my wife. Initially, she was not very thrilled, but and she got in kicking and screaming, but then she was convinced my kids at that time we we have a very young son and two daughters were in college and going into college. She said that both, both of them said, Okay, you go into politics. We're gonna stay away from. The public eye from the public eye so they switch off their social media. One of them dropped the last name and and we adjust as a family very well, because we used to go like yearly vacations, we go also to summer holidays. But that became difficult, that become not doable at all. So since 2016 2016 up to last year when I stepped down, it's eight to nine years, almost 10 years of public life, and I think I'm very grateful, very thankful to God that my family continue to support and now that I have some free time, been spending time with them, give

Dina Sherif: 10:57

them time again. Yes, yes. Maybe go back to making money again. This

Minister Uno: 11:01

is something that I know I'm I know I have delivered in the past, and at least much better delivery than my political career. But I'm looking forward to go back to investing, going back to business, creating economic opportunities. We just met some of very, very inspiring young

Dina Sherif: 11:29

Yeah, you had quite a big crowd here at MIT, coming from universities across very

Minister Uno: 11:33

excited. I'm very excited, and I I've gone through the process. I know I could work with any of the stakeholders I am stepping out from politics, and I think I enjoying spending time with the young generations, with entrepreneurs, micro, small, medium and enterprises to create economic opportunities. You know, at the core of what I really believe is, I think I could help my country and the region by creating good quality jobs. Yeah, I

Dina Sherif: 12:09

want to go back in time a little bit in your life. You studied here, you went to GW, studied here in the US, and you worked here for a little while, and likely you could have stayed here and built a life here, if you wanted to. And you know, you met with a group of students from across the universities here in the in the Boston, Cambridge area, who are probably struggling with this idea of, do I stay in America, or do I go back to Indonesia or the rest of Southeast Asia, where many of the students come from? Actually, you had quite a few from South Asia too. And you know, I'm an Egyptian, and here at the center, most of our student fellows come from growth markets across the world, and they want to build ventures back home and go home. And there is always this concern of, do I stay and build here? Do I go home and I built? But you made a decision to go back. And all of our countries, my country, your country, we're we are dealing with a massive population of young people, and we're also seeing massive brain drain of our incredible talent going elsewhere, but you went back. Why?

Minister Uno: 13:36

Well, apart from the issues of opportunities, but at that time, the only way to serve your country, and I'm extremely grateful that you know part of my education was funded By scholarship, is to give back by going back in my country. But time has changed Dina. Now what I'm telling students like the students that we met here at MIT is you could be anywhere physically, and you could contribute to your country or to your purpose by because technology is here, you could be a diaspora that deliver the best impact to whatever you do, regardless of where you are, through technologies and through this intertwined relationship that we have among regions. So going back, I think I look at myself in nine. 19 in the late 1980s early 1990s when I graduated, I could stay here, yeah, and build something. I don't sure, but I would, probably would not see the type of opportunities and growth that we see at our market. Our market is it is called emerging markets or developing we call

Dina Sherif: 15:25

it growth markets. We call it actually the highest percentage of growth is happening in the markets that people kind of look down upon. Yeah,

Minister Uno: 15:34

we are growth market. And at that time, Indonesia is growing at 8% the region is growing North of 5% while in the developed market, stagnating, is stagnating. And I see people entrepreneurs who built business within five years, they made it to the IPO landscape. And this is where I guess a lot of problems, I don't see it as problems, but I see it as opportunities. Exactly that needs to be solved by entrepreneurs who would be innovative enough and courageous dare to take risks and proactive, which is the entrepreneurial orientations that could make a difference. And I'm so, so grateful that I made that decision to come back. To come back.

Dina Sherif: 16:36

We have a fellow we also did a podcast with him, but it will come out a little later. And he's an Egyptian fellow in the renewable energy space. And he was the first he represented a company called Carm solar. It was the first IPP in Egypt, and that was started over a decade ago. And when he started, he was young, you know, and he was working in London and big multinational. He could have stayed there. He decided to come back to Egypt and start an IPP, an independent power producer, and he was the first, and everyone said to him, forget it. You're never going to make it, especially in the current climate, and it's so complicated, and this is such a complicated market. And he says something that I think all of us here at the Center have taken to heart and taken very seriously. He said, first of all, I love my country, and I want my country to prosper, because I have children and they need to have a future. And he says, entrepreneurship is a form of resistance. And I say, but resistance to what? And he said, resistance to the status quo. We have an obligation to create change and to fight and to push for a better tomorrow, and that is a form of resistance. Would you agree with that?

Minister Uno: 18:07

I 1,000% agree with that. Entrepreneurship is basically proving a point where people are telling you, you're not going to make it, you're not going to make it, you're not going to make it. I had a similar experience during Asian financial crisis, when we got back this very famous consultant from top management consulting firm saying that you are not going to make it and Indonesia will not make it right. It's too big to manage, too many islands, too complicated, too complicated, too many people, too many less educated people, sub $1,000 GDP per capita, full fledged democracy. You are not going to make it. This is too difficult, and I took it as a challenge. And this entrepreneurial spirits. And I think entrepreneurs look at this more as a fuel to even work harder, absolutely and be a little rebellious and rebellious. And, you know, I was telling I still remember his name. I don't want to mention it here. I still remember his firm. It's a big firm up until now, but he was proven wrong. 25 years later, not only I've able to build a good business, but Indonesia's thriving democracy. It is a growing economy, a working and growing economy, whereby we're moving up from sub 1000 GDP per capita to about 5000 GDP per capita now and within 20 years, we're going to make it to a status of developed nations. Inshallah. Definitely have to say that Inshallah, and I believe that it is a form of resistance, but also entrepreneurship. Fosters leaderships, you would see the spirits of entrepreneurs really trans translate later on to leadership in every sectors, including government. The President, before general Prabowo was an entrepreneur, and general Prabha is also an entrepreneur. He built businesses. He has an entrepreneurial mindset, yeah, and then don't, don't take me wrong. Entrepreneurship is not a profession. It's a mindset. You

Dina Sherif: 20:32

know, here at the center, we, we, we say we don't believe in the title leader, and we create this distinction between authority and leadership. And we think leadership is an activity. It's not a noun. And we say entrepreneurship, that is truly trying to solve a problem, is an act of leadership, and that takes courage. And I think it's a very interesting distinction. What you were saying is that entrepreneurs are constantly on this path of exerting leadership, creating a new path that didn't exist before. So I want to ask you, you know, you, you created this very successful business, you generated wealth, you created jobs, and when you accepted, like you said, to move into public policy, because you wanted to create greater impact. And I'm with you. I believe that when you move into public policy. It's a different scale, and you have the opportunity to influence change at a massive scale, but I have seen many entrepreneurs go into public policy. So my question to you is, how did being an entrepreneur and building a venture bottom up that was that scaled and did really, really well. How did that impact your ability to also engage in public policy and transform a sector as Minister of Tourism and creative economies, how did you take what you learned to apply to that ministry and to public policy.

Minister Uno: 22:26

The biggest difference when I make the transitions is a lot of people ask, Are you going into politics for because there's a lot of politicians in our part of the world would go into politics for power, for fame, for fortunes, instead of service, instead of to be able to serve. So I from day one, I made the decisions I want to serve the people, and my DNA as entrepreneurs would actually, later on, clash with some of the DNA of politicians or the values. And we need to make adjustments to be able to communicate better to the people. So I would rely on when, when I was in business. We use data, we use due diligence, we use surveys, we use qualitative and quantitative evaluations when we make decisions. So first, before you serve, you need to win elections, and that's a challenge. I started my public life not being appointed, but by proving to the leadership of and at the time, general Prabhu is the leader of our political party that I joined, that I'm capable to win in elections. So through datas and before serving in ministerial pose. I was a vice governor of Jakarta, and we ran a very tough campaign in 2017 we managed to win, and that is basically was enabled by the use of good quality data, and at the end of the day, is what the people need and what are in the top of their minds they would expect government to do. And this is very similar to your approach to. Read products. So I would say very, very close similarity between consumer goods and and politics. When you run for for an office, you need to communicate that you have what it takes to solve the problem that majority of the people need. And nine years ago, as as much as today, people want to have a better life. And when they are pressed, what type of better life? Oh, I want to have better economy. What do you mean by better economy? I want to have an income. How are you going to get an income? I want to have a job, but not low paying jobs. I want to have good paying jobs, quality jobs. What do you think you would aspire to? I want to start my business. I want to start my macro, small, medium enterprises. I want to be my own captain of my ship. So then, when we see all this iterations of what would be at the core of what the people want, then you would be able to design as a public servant, as a civil servant, as a as leaders in the government policies that would basically create good quality jobs, provide economic opportunities so they can start their own micro, small, medium enterprises. Help them with training, help them with marketing, help help them with financing, access to banking. So all this is something that I believe I was able to gain from early on in my my career as a public service leader and and I think I take this not as constant, but very dynamic on and religiously, every six months I would refresh myself with the most recent data. This data driven and evidence based have served me well, both when we were leading 30,000 employees, to managing a city of 10 million people, creating 120,000 jobs, to leading a ministry that basically provide livelihood to about 50 million Indonesians. So those type of experience really helped.

Dina Sherif: 28:01

I love it. It's all about understanding the consumer, right, and who you are trying to serve, whether it be through your business or through public service.

Minister Uno: 28:10

And it's never about me, no, always about the consumer. It's all about the people and how you could positively impact their life. Yeah. So

Dina Sherif: 28:20

I, you know, I watched a bunch like, Donovan, I watched a bunch of your interviews, and there is something consistent that you've said, like, I mean, and you, you probably speak Indonesian. Now, I did watch a number of interviews where I had to read, you know, but it was great. And one of the things you consistently said, and, you know, you've only been out of government now for really months. Like, no. I mean, are you recovered? I mean, it's only been a short time, right? But you throughout all your interviews, you'd say one thing, when I became Minister of Tourism and creative economies, I had zero tourists.

Minister Uno: 28:57

You have to know the story, because, and it was during

Dina Sherif: 28:59

COVID. During COVID, there were no tourists coming anywhere, you know? I mean, for countries like Indonesia and Egypt, where tourism is a big part of our livelihood, COVID impacted us, and you became minister with zero tourists. But yet you you took on the challenge, and you ended your time as Minister having created millions of good quality jobs, that's wonderful and really beautiful. And it's a short time frame, because 2020, to 20, it's four years. You started with zero, you ended with millions of tourists and millions of good jobs for the people of Indonesia and and I just, I want to say, like, what was going through your mind at the beginning when you started, and what was going through your mind as you exited, okay? And also, I just want to throw in there, you talk about Swift, Swift genomics a lot.

Unknown: 29:59

Ah. Ah,

Dina Sherif: 30:00

and, you know, I was like, Oh, my God, he's a Swiftie. How did you have to how did you throw that one in the mix

Minister Uno: 30:10

first to understand the context a little bit better, we went through a very tough campaign in 2019 when I ran with general proposal for the presidential elections, we lost to Pat Jokowi, the incumbent back then, and it was I was his campaign spoke person in 2014 when he ran first time, the first time as president. So I know the talking points very well. And you know, we were competing against a very strong president, incumbent that actually loved by the people, but towards the end, because of a tough campaign, and I guess you're very familiar with politics in our part of the world, in the emerging markets, all

Dina Sherif: 31:09

too familiar. All too familiar. It's always all messy. So messy

Minister Uno: 31:13

would be the word. But what happened is, I managed to convince through my entrepreneurial background that politics should not be a zero sum game. Politics should when you really care for the people and when your best interest is the betterment of your people, you need to work out something so the country is not divided because it was such a messy campaign, so I initiated the discussions, and later on, we formed the unity government general Prabha, who served as Minister of Defense. I managed to convince the president, then by Jokowi, to say, you know, I was really tired, and it was really exhausted, fatigue. I need some time, and at that time, I could show that major part of my personal wealth was used to fund the campaign, and I said that maybe I need to take a break and try to make back some money. Yeah, so he was okay with that. And after about a year, year and a half at the height of the COVID, then I got the score. So I got to interpreted this. Did I do anything wrong? President, angry at me, because the portfolio that was given to me is probably the toughest portfolio, because we have zero tourists coming in and zero tourist movement domestically. But then I because I always see a glass half full. Well, this is an empty glass, but I

Dina Sherif: 33:00

always see a glass mine is not empty.

Minister Uno: 33:04

I see the glass half full. Then I said that this may be a chance for me to to prove that I could deliver the type of innovations that would be needed during COVID. So, you know, the first six months. I know Bali is the epicenter of Indonesian tourism, and it was completely like ghost town. So we moved the headquarter of the ministry to Bali from Jakarta, to show that we're with the people we know us so much, so much, and completely have their livelihood, their income, disappear. So we We then made some innovations in terms of sustainable tourism, what would be accepted so get people to move around during COVID And apparently, crowd control limited. So we say that we may not have this big tourist attractions, but why don't we democratize to have tourism village all over the country? So it started with only 100 tourism village, so now about 6600 so people have a chance to go, to feel the village life, to feel the nature. And now Indonesia is at the top of rural tourism ecosystem in the world, and that's basically the pandemic winner that we so that was the beginning, and towards the end, as I prepare myself for the end of my tenure is, you know, I look around, I see that, you know, a lot of men is calling the shot here at the ministry. But. When I'm home, when I we decide to go for vacations, who calls a shot, who, who makes decisions where to go. It's my wife in creative economy too. When I buy shirts, it's the wife choosing. How come we have so little women participation. So I made it the point that towards the end of my career, I want top Ethel loans of the decision makers will be women leaders. So I was able to convince the across the ministry, the leadership that we put in close to 60% of upper echelon and top leaders of the ministry held by women. And as I exited, I sort of like make few of the strong statements of saying that the next Minister should be women, because women would understand tourism and creative economy better and true enough. There you go, the new minister, a new minister, a woman minister, and she's great. She's doing a good job. And I think this is something that going through my mind is to leave the sectors in a better place and the ministry with better leadership.

Dina Sherif: 36:27

I love it. I love it. I always love when women are included, before I transition to talking going deeper into your support of entrepreneurship and economic opportunity. You know you, you often talk about, you often say that Indonesia, Indonesia's you talk about Indonesia's untapped potential, right? And you know, when we talk about Indonesia, and you mentioned Indonesia to people in the world. This the story tends to navigate around, you know, the tropical paradise of Bali and the tourist destination, which is great. You were Minister of Tourism, but Indonesia so much more, yeah. And I would imagine, like many countries around the world who get put in the same bucket as Indonesia. There's massive untapped potential. So on this podcast, what is the story of Indonesia that you want people to know? Well, we're

Minister Uno: 37:36

the fourth most populous country in the world. We're the third largest democracy. Indonesia is part of the g20 our economy grows at north of 5% which is very, very decent and remarkable. We have quintupled the GDP per capita in the last 20 years, and we are heading towards the developed nations status by 2045 but we were completely punching way below our belt, below our weight. Some people know more about Bali than about Indonesia. And Indonesia is so much more than tropical paradise in Bali, but this is a country whereby you know, again, 25 years ago, that same consultant mentioned to us that, Oh, it's too Islamic. Uh, Indonesia is not gonna gonna register well with foreign investors. I

Dina Sherif: 38:58

feel that we get that a lot you

Minister Uno: 39:01

would you come from Egypt, you would get the same but not only that, we are now a full fledged democracy. We are growing economically, but we're also maintaining a moderate society, whereby tolerance, uh diversity, diversity inclusions. And we had women president before, and we have an exciting market whereby the green economy, if you look at the epicentrics, the potential of new and renewable energies, technologies in terms of digital transformations, the breakthrough in innovations of healthcare. There is humongous, and I think Indonesia is beyond the numbers. Have the most exciting economic and socio economic landscape for people to take a look at and invest our market has been pretty much not the market that people would see right away when they look at Asian opportunities or Southeast Asia, they would look at other markets. But this is something that consistently, and I have proved it working for LPS across North America, that we have been delivering an above market return for their investments in Indonesia. And you need to have a good 510, years down the road perspectives, rather than from quarter to quarter analysis. And this is something that I've been trying to convince thought leaders, like minded investors, to give Indonesia some much better exposure, and that's why I'm I'm also here. Would like to talk to MIT and your program to to put more attentions to Indonesia in particular, and Southeast Asia. Yeah,

Dina Sherif: 41:35

it's not just open for tourism. It's open for investment opportunities. And I think it's time for our markets to stop being seen with this narrow lens. Yes, there we have so much more to offer, and I totally get that. So you gave me a great transition because, you know, I would say over the past 15 years, you know, you're right, Indonesia has also kind of been on the rise as an entrepreneurial hub, and we've seen Indonesia give birth to some incredible ventures. I don't like to say that having unicorns is the the the kind of, you know, goal that we want to achieve. I like to say, we like to say lots of companies that have kind of reached that kind of middle to unicorn status for our economies, is fantastic, but Indonesia has given birth to a number of unicorns, and you were just actually telling me that grab Indonesia, or grab and and and Kojak have merged, which is fantastic. In the process, I've read it in the news. We're in the process of merging, which is wonderful. But you've also there. There have been some great unicorns that have been born in Indonesia. So I want how have companies like the ones that I've mentioned, and here at the center, when we talk about unicorns, we like to talk about the ripple effects of unicorns, not the goal is not the unicorn itself or reaching that billion dollar status. The goal is, what does reaching that billion dollar status do for your economy when you're a growth market and when your entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem is emerging. And so, how, how? How did these unicorns? What did that open up for the ecosystem in Indonesia, and how did it shift the narrative of the country

Minister Uno: 43:37

I was sharing, the story of how I get into tech investments late, and we sold too early, and since then, we have not recovered. So among the big investment firm before I left, we were probably the only major investment firm which did not make an investment into the big eight or nine unicorns that we have, and that's basically because of our focus and our models of wanting to see cash being generated in the business, what we call delta between revenues and costs that is actually fueling the business for growth. But looking at, you know, a lot of people ask, How come we have been able to Indonesia, have been able to produce this type of startups into the unicorn status. And I think one contributing fact would be the size of the market. But interestingly, because I've been in the side of the government, some of this unicorn. In was able to get to that status and to the size because of the absence of government. When government not able to produce a type of Transportations that would be needed by the people,

Dina Sherif: 45:18

in comes the private sector, private

Minister Uno: 45:20

sectors when the banking sector is not able to provide and up to now, only less than 30% of the micro, small, medium enterprises have access to proper banking facilities. Then the FinTech comes in, when the markets and government, because there's part of the markets is also being dominated by state owned enterprises have not been able to provide the affordable energies. Then you see renewable energy, new and renewable energies interventions by this unicorns, and they move so fast, and this is the type of innovations at lightning speed that was being able to be executed by these entrepreneurs. So we as government actually need to provide a sandbox, rather than slap them with regulations or, you know, ecosystems that may hinder their trajectory to growth. We have to work with them, and I'm happy that there are some challenges, obviously, with the cycle of fundraising and the winter intact. But I would say these combinations the size of the market, the policy of the government, the absence of government and also the growth of the economy would be the contributing factor, and the introductions of new technology and the entrepreneurial spirits of the founders and entrepreneur are really the engine that provides the massive growth in the startup scene in Indonesia?

Dina Sherif: 47:22

Yeah. So then I want to ask you now, out of government, and you're now thinking about investing in tech heavily and really supporting these, this new generation of entrepreneurs, how do you want the ecosystem in Indonesia to evolve. What are your aspirations?

Minister Uno: 47:45

I would like to see the startups that this scene that we're seeing would have a better chance to scale. And I would like better access to information, better access to trainings, the upscaling, re Skilling and new scalings that they need to do. We were pushing lifelong learning. So all these entrepreneurs would like keep going and learning and going like a pit stop every now and then to retool themselves and have like timeouts, whereby everybody like a football game. Everybody would then share exchange knowledge and strategies and as a team in Indonesia now I am picking the side of the private sectors. I think private sectors can contribute probably nine times more, pretty much, like tourism, contributes six times more jobs than every dollar invested in other sectors. I think private sectors now would do the heavy lifting to create good quality jobs. So the government needs to complement that with good policy making to provide a better ecosystems, to provide better investment climate to and the banking sectors to provide access to funding, and more and more micro, small, medium enterprises could create economic opportunities when you're able to deliver all these parameters that that would be needed for for the business to grow.

Dina Sherif: 49:41

Yeah, I guess the question I have, you know, you've traveled across the world, obviously, you're, you're extremely well traveled in your own region. Somehow, the world has created all these labels for where we come from. Know, and somehow we get lumped into these buckets. But at the same time, I see that for our markets to truly prosper, we need to see much deeper integration across our markets, and it's extremely difficult for right now, for an Indonesian entrepreneur to say, Oh, I'm going to scale to Africa, or for a Nigerian entrepreneur to say, I'm going to scale to Southeast Asia, we have not opened up spaces for our ecosystems to connect and for our markets to better serve each other. And I say this with and you know this with the full understanding that we can really call our markets the majority population markets right now, so the largest percentage of consumers in the world and incoming consumers in the world are going to be in Southeast Asia, in Africa and and South Asia as well, as well as certain parts of Latin America. But yet, we have not integrated our markets for our entrepreneurs to be able to easily scale from Indonesia to Brazil and from Brazil to Nigeria, Nigeria to Egypt and so forth and so on, as an investor, but also as a former policy maker. What can we do? And I'm not just saying you, we, collectively, all of us, who are really passionate about the significance of entrepreneurship and venture building for our economies to continue to thrive and for the people in our countries to be able to have dignified livelihoods and high quality jobs. How can we better integrate like what is? What is stopping us and why are we all trapped in our colonial legacies of division?

Minister Uno: 51:59

I visited I visited Egypt in when I was still in between jobs in 2020, before I was appointed Minister, right

Dina Sherif: 52:13

before COVID. You loved it, right? I

Minister Uno: 52:16

loved it, but that was right in the middle of COVID. So I was shocked, because this is the second largest economy in Africa. It's one of the first country that recognized Indonesia independence. It's one of the largest populations of Muslims, similar culture. And we have 1000, 10s of 1000 Indonesians going to school,

Dina Sherif: 52:49

right? We had so many in Al Azhar, Al Azhar, and also in Cairo University, in

Minister Uno: 52:54

Cairo University, and we have similar, similarity of culture. And a lot of tight relationship, but Indonesia's trade to Egypt is less than 2% and it has been flat, not growing. You love coffee. We produce coffee, but the type of coffee that you guys consume are non from not a lot from Indonesia, food energy. We buy a lot of raw material for our cement industries, but we are not tapping into the potentials, so much so that we don't have, at that time, connectivity. I have to fly to somewhere else to get to somewhere else. I mean, now then I made it a point. We need to get better connected. Yeah. So Egypt air now fly to Indonesia. There's a direct flight to direct flight to Jakarta. Secondly, we have more Indonesian restaurants in Cairo and other parts of Egypt, and we love Egyptian food. O Mali. We're not going

Dina Sherif: 54:19

to tell that story. We're not going to test the story, and I can tell the story on the podcast.

Minister Uno: 54:24

We have also a closer trade, because trade will start, and when you trade, the next thing that follows is investments. That's right, when your investments starts pouring in, then you have opportunities around the supply chain. So this is something that I think we need to work better, deliver better. You know, starting with connectivity, with infrastructures, invest in events. That would put together Egyptians, great entrepreneurs, with Indonesians, entrepreneurs, but not just B to B, but g to g, communities to communities. And I think many more Indonesians would love to visit Egypt on their way to Umrah, maybe, and a lot more Egyptians would like to visit Indonesia, to not only for not

Dina Sherif: 55:29

only for tourism, but for investment, grow and

Minister Uno: 55:33

grow. And some of the big companies in the world is from Egypt, and they are open to invest in Indonesia. So I think the cycle will be like that. And I managed to focus is this, Egypt and Indonesia, but there are a lot of other things, like Latin America. We are not trading with Latin America that much, although we are in constant need of cattle supplies, but we are not tapping that particular operation, or even Africa, right and or Africa, and Africa is the fastest growing region in terms of growth,

Dina Sherif: 56:10

and six of the largest fastest growing are there. It's

Minister Uno: 56:14

a great opportunities for us.

Dina Sherif: 56:16

So I'm going to ask you, as an investor, as a former entrepreneur. Well, really, you're never a former entrepreneur. You're always an entrepreneur. Once you're an entrepreneur, you're forever. It's forever going you bring it everywhere you go. You know, I do the same here at the center. I have a very, you know, extreme entrepreneurial spirit can be a bit taxing for people, but, you know, it is who I am. But the question is, like, what here at the center, we're always saying integration, integration. We need to see deeper integration. But what are like two things you think we should do to start pushing for our ecosystems? So the if we're just going to take it from an investor lens, how do we get risk capital players to tell entrepreneurs from growth markets that it's time for you to scale to other growth markets.

Minister Uno: 57:09

This is what we experience when we are looking at not just Indonesia, but a region like Southeast Asia. First, I would say, you, you asked for two

Dina Sherif: 57:24

things, two things, two the most important things, I

Minister Uno: 57:27

think I would I would pivot back to dare, to take risk. You need the ability to look at other markets and accept the risk that it that that is present, but navigate that risk in order for us to be able to understand the market and tap the opportunities there, we've did it when we invested in other markets outside Indonesia, and that could be done, but you need entrepreneurial that have courage, entrepreneurs that would be courageous enough to leave the comfort zone and go beyond and go beyond. And this has been shown in the past, and trade would be a good way to because investments, you are risking your your capital. But when you trade and you see possibility, there's always opportunities for you to to invest your capital down the road. Secondly, I would say it go back to the entrepreneurial orientations of proactivity. You, you would we call it in our language, sila to Rahim. Well, we

Dina Sherif: 58:53

have that in our language, siletter, Rahim. Of course,

Minister Uno: 58:57

I think we need to double down on our silat Rahim, because silat Rahim will increase your the likelihood of that you live longer. This is according to the science. And actually, we were always told by our elderly that when you network, you increase the possibility of you to create wealth. So I would say opportunities for us to to explore, opportunities to look at investments, look at trade, and learn from the best of the best, learn from failures, and create a network of like minded people understanding what is the latest and the greatest of each market

Dina Sherif: 59:55

would be a good way to start. That's what we do here in the center. We create. Community of entrepreneurs from around the world and and we, we say to them, you need to give each other access. You need to help each other get into each other's markets. And when we started the foundry fellowship for Africa, and in my mind, you know, obviously the foundry fellowship is for more advanced stage entrepreneurs in Africa. At the very core of it was, how can we start seeing African entrepreneurs, or entrepreneurs from different countries in Africa? That's a more precise way of saying it, start seeing other African countries as markets to grow to. And you know, I would say that we're this is our fourth year of this fellowship, and this community has gotten stronger and stronger every year, and these fellows now a take pride in the countries they come from. They believe in the potential, and they are now helping each other, and they're exposing each other to each other as Marcus, and they're telling each other this, you're Nigerians. Is how you access Egypt. You're from Senegal. This is how you access Kenya, and so forth and so on. And you know, there is enormous power in creating communities of entrepreneurs in parts of the world where community was not really the desired outcome, right? That type of connectivity. So we have to push and create that. So I want to ask you, you have also been a huge advocate for AI and generative AI, and that's like the topic of the day. The these days we have to, you know, it's the topic of the day. And you know, you, you, you stated previously, I didn't find this, but according to Donovan, you said, AI and automation can either be a great equalizer or a great divider, and it depends on how we implement it. And right now, we're seeing converse, endless conversations around AI and the potential for AI in global growth markets, and the potential that AI could have on productivity. But there's also this fear, so we're all dancing, you know, there's like a dance of, do we embrace? Do we step away? So, you know, what is the way we can ensure that AI becomes an equalizer rather than a divider? And from your perspective, how can we use AI to create greater prosperity, but prosperity that is equitable and also inclusive.

Minister Uno: 1:02:50

Positive mindset, AI would be a divider if you have a negative mindset these sets of and it happened already in the past, and histories have revealed and told adolescents that when innovations come into place, you need to embrace it. You need to make sure that these innovations would be a positive or will give a positive impacts to what you do. And this is where I would say quadruple P, public, private people partnership. This four P's would be needed, because we are only at the beginning of, you know, think of this as the early years of the internet, whereby, in a new era, you know, I remember sending emails to my boss, and I got scolded at that time. I was still a professional. I said, You should fax it. I said, But I already sent an email, you know, and and later on, nobody would know now, what is a fax machine looks like. So AI is gonna stay, and for here to stay, and this is going to really impact every facet of our life. I believe that it would be a positive things if people are having a positive mindset about this and discuss, what are the risk, what are the challenges, what could be done with AI better and what we should steer away from applications, the ethical issue about AI also, you know now, with the concept of higher learning, the Institute of well, this education framework that needs to be changed. Much. So I think I we, we have another word, like sila torahi. We have hustnuts on, you know, Sun Christmas on. Is that right? That's

Dina Sherif: 1:05:13

what we say. And it's a it's Arabic husband, we need to give the benefit, benefit of the doubt,

Minister Uno: 1:05:20

so I'm willing to give benefit of the doubt through careful monitoring and evaluating that this AI would actually be able to deliver a much better society going forward. I

Dina Sherif: 1:05:39

think we just need to learn how to use it and think about how to integrate it for the greater good and and really dance with these new and advanced technologies that are emerging at an extremely fast pace. Yeah,

Minister Uno: 1:05:54

learn to be patient, learn to accept

Dina Sherif: 1:05:57

and learn to learn and learn and not be afraid. Learn to

Minister Uno: 1:06:00

fail. This is very, very and it's better to fail early as entrepreneur, you would understand absolutely because when you fail much later at your entrepreneurial stage, it is much costlier and more painful. Yeah, but if you fail early, you learn faster, and you avoid the mistakes that you should be able to circumvent and to navigate your journey better. Well, you

Dina Sherif: 1:06:31

know what we say about failure? Failure is only failure if you haven't learned. Yes, right?

Minister Uno: 1:06:37

Well, I would say, in my experience failure is actually staircase to success. So every step of the staircase is actually built around failures. Yeah, I

Dina Sherif: 1:06:55

totally agree. I love it. Okay, so every podcast, we dedicate a question to Donovan, who is a producer, and he always has, you know this, his life is storytelling in the digital space. And you know he's, he's a creative he's a poet. You should go attend one of his poetry nights here in Boston when you're in town. But and his, you know, his background comes from the digital media space. And he has a specific question for you about the Creator, creative economy and storytelling. And he said in a recent interview, you said Indonesia's biggest asset is not just as natural beauty, but its people, their creativity, their entrepreneurial spirit and their ability to turn ideas into reality. And in the past decade, we have seen Indonesian creators like Raya ricas, who I didn't know about and I was texting, he was like, Who? And I had to look her up. And frost diamond become almost like cultural ambassadors to 10s of millions worldwide for Indonesia. So opportunities for voices from the region are growing, and in 2024 the digital content industry contributed roughly 54 billion US dollars to the global creative economy, and it's only projected to grow. So Donovan's question to you is, how do you see this evolving, and what is your hope for Indonesia's digital storytelling space, and what new economic opportunities do you think it will create for Indonesia and beyond a

Minister Uno: 1:08:34

creative economy? Did I get that right, Donovan, that's a very good question, Donovan, and I'd like to visit some of your poetry reading sessions. Creative Economy is defined in the law number 24 of 2019 in Indonesia. That consists about 17 sub sectors, including movie, film animations, culinary fashions and so on and so forth, including gaming. Now, if you look at this collective sectors and sub sectors, Indonesia's creative economy contribute to around 8% of its GDP derived from Creative Economy and about 25 million people, $27 billion of exports, close to $100 billion of economic value added. That puts Indonesia on the map, on the map, and number three in the WORLD NEWS, Number One is the United States of America. Wow. So USA with roughly about 12 is percent of its GDP derived from Creative Economy. Second is South Korea, with around 10, 11% third is Indonesia, and third is Indonesia. Now, who knew that? Because this is fact, and I. We believe that the strength of our creative economy lies with the creativity of the people. So you mentioned about story. There's millions of stories to be told. I told my team. You know, picture tells 1000 words, but videos reveals millions of stories, and because of our richness of our culture, there are so many stories to tell. We call it storynomics. So economics, empowerment based on storytelling, and because of our 700 plus ethnic groups, we have rich in tradition and cultures. This could be turned into economic opportunities. And when you talk about digital 100 50 million Indonesians play games. But the opportunity is there for Indonesian publisher and game developer to introduce a really worldwide Indonesian stories that would be put into games you saw the movie Avatar, and there are stories about people who live in the sea that was based on a bajo ethnic groups in Indonesia that basically they could dive free, dive without any equipment, for five minutes, holding their breath for five to six minutes. And that was made into movies that is very, very world famous now. So I'm very optimistic that through digital creations, plus AI and many other interventions that you know the sky's the limit. Indonesia's creative economy is going to be very powerful, and at the end of the day, not only deliver the number of contributions to GDP to about maybe 10 to 12% but also create good quality jobs. Many of Indonesian writers would make it to Hollywood, because you would know that the creative economy in America have been able to produce Hollywood, country music, jazz, hip hop and so on and so forth. Korea now follow suit with their K Pop, with their Korean drama beats, Afro beats. But very few people know about Indonesian musics of Don dudes, I think risky, like damn dudes, but because it has a certain beat that even though you're sad or gloomy, you hear the sound and you start moving your body.

Dina Sherif: 1:13:12

True, you know, I bet I don't. When I'm sad and gloomy, there's certain music,

Minister Uno: 1:13:17

no. And you know, you mentioned swift nomics, Taylor Swift, not your

Dina Sherif: 1:13:25

Swifty. I am because you're Swifty.

Minister Uno: 1:13:28

I although Casey lost last week, but and Kelsey was very sad. But you know, every great stories would need an end anyway. When she was in the region, she proposed to Indonesia to have a concert in in Jakarta, but we could not provide a venue. And the economic package that would incentivize her to to come to Indonesia, so Singapore took it for six days. Now, Indonesia would have the same equivalent of Taylor Swift in the next five to 10 years. That would be at the world stage, like Egypt have what mikulsum

Dina Sherif: 1:14:14

was way back. Continues to be a legend, and

Minister Uno: 1:14:20

she continues to be a legend, even up till now. So this type of creative artistry and creative economic initiatives would be massive, massive injections to not only Indonesian economy, but also the region. Yeah.

Dina Sherif: 1:14:45

So you know you've and you know this, this past hour has been wonderful, right? Extremely rich, and you've gone through many things, success, failure, public service. Successful business now also significant investor, and by any standards, people would categorize you as successful, but I think you're way more than your titles and your achievements. There's something deeper there, and now you're starting a new chapter in your life, and we don't know how that's going to evolve yet, but you're on a new path. What has been your guiding principle throughout

Minister Uno: 1:15:35

the guiding principles that have pretty much be the North Star is basically the notion of hoerrunas and Fauci is a Hadith. I don't know how you translate it, but

Dina Sherif: 1:15:59

doing good for people,

Minister Uno: 1:16:01

right? The best of the people is the people who do good for people who would benefit other peoples. So I'm measuring my impact very now that I'm outside the government, I'm more flexible. I have more time. I could be more focused in terms of the economic empowerment. So I'd like to give and contribute to providing economic opportunities to Indonesians, to entrepreneurs, to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, how they could reach prosperity through economic empowerment and make sure that they would be able to contribute. I've done this in the past. I work with I don't have any problem working with any stakeholders or party affiliations. I've delivered, I've proven that I could deliver by in terms of creating 120,000 jobs when I was in in the city of Jakarta government, and 4.4 million new jobs in tourism and creative economy ministry. So I think this is something that that guides me, but there are a lot of unfinished jobs. For instance, because Donovan asked me a questions. It is my term. It is my turn to ask Donovan a question. Now, okay, at least I

Dina Sherif: 1:17:42

went to Donovan. You know, I've had other people on this podcast who have said, let me turn the table on you. Dina, question, I'm happy for it to go to Donovan.

Minister Uno: 1:17:50

I would want to ask Donovan, because we are in the creative economy, and you mentioned digital. But name one Indonesian dish that you would know from your experience. Can you name one Indonesian dish?

Unknown: 1:18:11

Indonesian? No, but my family is my born Thai when I was raised by Filipinos and so Indonesia,

Minister Uno: 1:18:17

not specifically, right? See, this is the failure of the previous Minister of Tourism and creative economy. We've we're really, really under delivering of Indonesia, food diplomacy, Gastro diplomacy. In the past, people travel 1000s of miles through big waves to find spices in Indonesia. Manhattan was actually a trade between the Brits and the Dutch that involved an island somewhere in the eastern part of Indonesia that was given to the Dutch. And the Dutch gave this island to the Brits. So people know about Indonesian spices, but not Indonesian food. Thailand and Filipino have better in the world stage in their food scene. I mean, Thai food is everywhere here, but not any specific Indonesian restaurant in Boston. And we have two 80 million people. So that proves my point that we are still having a lot of homework. And part of the country, so we started this program called Indonesia spice up the world in the middle part of my tenure as ministry, I hope the new minister would continue so that Donovan will have a chance to eat Indonesian food at an Indonesian restaurant in Boston. Yeah. And top known Indonesian food is actually Nasi Goreng. And

Dina Sherif: 1:20:07

what's in Nasi Gore it's a fried rice.

Minister Uno: 1:20:11

And the second one is Gado. Gado Gado Gado Gado Gado is salad with peanut sauce. And third is satay is a beef chicken skewers. Yeah,

Dina Sherif: 1:20:26

that we know. So a top three, well, we're waiting for the Indonesian restaurant in Boston. We need it. So when I asked you this question about your guiding principle, you mentioned a hadith. And so I want you to talk to me about faith. Um, you know, for me, faith plays an extremely important role in my life. It's it's what has kept me going through some of the most difficult times, but it's also what has kept me humble during my most successful of times. And you and I haven't known each other for long, but I know that faith plays a role in your life. So talk to us about faith.

Minister Uno: 1:21:13

I'm a late comer when it comes to faith, I found Islam actually while I was studying here. I grew up getting educations from Christian schools, and then Catholic all Boys High School. So my exposure is every now and then my dad, who's who's Muslim, but more sort of like, not that religious Muslim, every now and then and my mom sent some ulamas to Teach me to read Koran, but I'm not that really been that I have not been good in following that order, so I skipped classes, and I really focus on my passion for basketball. I played a lot of basketball during high school and but when I was here in the United States and in the lonely place of Wichita, Kansas,

Dina Sherif: 1:22:29

and later on, imagine Wichita being a lonely place. And later

Minister Uno: 1:22:33

on in Washington, DC, I started reading Quran. And then i i found through, and I'm extremely, extremely grateful that I met my wife who is more biased and more religious, to teach me more about Islam, and it has been basically the path that that I've been taking more and more, and then we perform Umrah and Hajj, and it's something that even take a much more important role in our life. So I would say I'm a late comer, because not until I'm in the 20s that I embrace this. Most Indonesians have embraced it very early on. But, you know, I embraced it, and you know, I don't think any of this is possible without Allah interventions even dropping one leaf, he has a command over it, and I think we should be very grateful that we are giving the chance to be able to give positive impact to our community. Yes, 100%

Dina Sherif: 1:24:01

so my dad was, you know, also very spiritual. And I grew up with a father who spoke about death a lot, and I think, you know, it took me a long time to understand, you know why? And I think a big part of that was because there's, there's a moment where we will all depart from this world. And for you and I, we believe that we will go back to our Creator. And he would always say, between that moment of birth and death is a really teeny, tiny window, and you have to make it count. And you know, I would remember, we would always go my sister and I, especially my late brother, not so much, but definitely would be like, this, Life is so unfair. And he would be like. Like that is life. How are you going to respond to that unfair? That's what's going to make your life count. But he would always say, you have a small window and you need to make it count. And my mom would always say, wherever you could help somebody, you need to help. And I would always watch her. People would call her all the time. Can you help me do this? Can you help me do that? Can you connect me? This pursues also in government. And whenever she could help, she would always help. So this is how I was raised. But most importantly, this idea of death is imminent, and we don't know when it will come. So what are you going to do with your life? Was has always been top of mind for me, so my question, my last question for you is it was really beautiful to walk in to the floor above us and to see this room packed with students from across the city coming because they see you As a role model. And it was clear that they they deeply respected what you had to say. But when your time comes and at the end of all of it, what is the legacy that you want to have left behind? How is it that you want people to remember pas and de uno?

Minister Uno: 1:26:24

There's always a question when you're about to bury a body, what is this person? Is he good? Her or not, and everybody would normally said her, so I would really want to be remember that I'm a

Dina Sherif: 1:26:49

doer of good, DOER of good. Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast, and I'm deeply honored and inspired and ritzy, wasn't wrong when he said, You're a very special person with a lot to share, and I hope that you continue to be a part of our community here at the center, and we look forward to seeing what this next chapter of your life is going to bring To the next generation of amazing entrepreneurs coming out of Indonesia and your broader region, and I hope we can work together to find deeper connections between MIT Indonesia and Southeast Asia more more generally. So to our audience, thank you for listening or watching and stay tuned for for what comes next. We always have an amazing, amazing group of people who joined this podcast, who are deeply purpose driven, and we are deeply grateful for that. So

Minister Uno: 1:27:53

I'm gonna subscribe to this. Yes, you haven't subscribed yet, I think so we already subscribed. Don't forget to share, like and comment on this

Dina Sherif: 1:28:07

channel, absolutely and you can find our episodes on Spotify, on Apple, on YouTube. So please subscribe, share and always give us feedback. We are very happy to to to hear people you want to hear next on this podcast and stay purpose driven. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.

Unknown: 1:28:39

You.